Forums

[fish]

Setting up and running a forum has gotta be a labour of love right?

Reading various posts over the years leads me to believe that:

- it's not at a project to be taken on lightly for it to be successful
- there's a lot of maintenance involved
- forum's are v. hard to monestise
- by now many, if not most niches/sectors are well catered for already
- ROI. forums as a model don't compare in resale terms any where near as good for example as a decent domain name (where you have spent as much time & £ developing/promoting)

I'm not talking about domain forums specifically, take any hobby, sport, pastime, employment sector, car type, you-name-it , in this day and age why would you want to set up a forum?

Not that I have ideas but you'd have thought the format for forums would have developed to be more 'with it' these days given what progress has been made in terms of web design, accessibility, functionality et al

You often see via ad networks huge pushes by start-ups (& established co's) promoting themselves, never yet have I seen a forum based business doing similar activities.

Are forums simply a 'cottage industry' ?

Are there rewards to be had (if so what exactly are they) ?

Your thoughts & comments welcome

Cheers,

Howie

 

[accelerator]

I have one really good (well in my opinion ) forum name, but what's stopping me developing it is the amount of effort needed to moderate posts. Really I'd want moderators to do it for me, so there would be a lot of set up and admin hassle. Compare that to an affiliate site where you can develop and then let it sit there.

I'm sure the rewards are there, you can really capture a market segment, but it's a lot of hard work.

Rgds

 

[monaghan]

A forum is hard work, they are often a target for spammers making moderation a continuous activity. When you set-up you will have to attract members and more or less have to moderate every post to find the real posters from those joining just for the link value.

Hard work, but if you get it right you have a good community

 

[Blossom]

Forums in my kind of area were always set up more as a way to interact with visitors and create more of a network (as there was no such thing as 'social media' back then). It was more for promoting your sites and interacting with people with similar interests rather than with a view to buy something - or in the forum owner's case, to make money.

The problem is is that even setting up a forum is a considerable amount of work, and then if you end up with a really snarky community it feels like a waste of time.

In terms of monetising a forum, I have no experience. Running a forum is such a massive job, and even at 500 active members and no advertising, I could still have let it consume all my time (and bandwidth).

If you're looking to create a forum today, you need plenty of loyal visitors to your main site, a proper niche, or an established business. I would like to see more big companies jump on the forum bandwagon, but I think most are too scared.

 

[snooze]

I think first it a forum must fit into your business model I added one to a site I have and I am constantly removing spam. This is how bad it is, I have over 1000 registered member and 99.99% of the posts are from me. I remove the link and thinking about deleting everything.

So, yes you must be prepared for the work and running a forum with other sites that need on-going update not easy.

 

[Admin]

Build a forum that you will use a lot yourself, then you will be there anyway ;-)